Article excerpt

Byline: Deborah K. Dietsch , THE WASHINGTON TIMES

One woman's bling is another woman's livelihood. Philadelphian Helen Williams Drutt's hobby of buying jewelry at craft shows during the 1960s led her to open a gallery and sell the wearable art. She spent the next four decades amassing one of the world's largest avant-garde jewelry collections, comprising more than 800 pieces by 175 talents from 18 different countries.

Now, 275 pieces of jewelry, drawings and sculptures from her collection, which was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2002, are on view at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery. This international survey of quirky, contemporary designs succeeds in celebrating the inventiveness of ornament, which, especially in Western cultures, is too easily dismissed as frivolous and empty.

Luxury is downplayed in this broad spectrum of designs from the 1960s through the early 2000s, many of which seem tailor-made for the current economic downturn. The brooches, necklaces, earrings and bracelets have few extravagant gems to taunt the viewer.

Some are made of lowly materials such as cardboard, pencils, light bulbs and fragments of picture frames. Their allure doesn't come from their materials but the audacious ways in which they challenge the conventional view of jewelry as precious adornment and symbol of wealth.

Several pieces are so extreme in their shapes and assemblages that it is hard to imagine anyone wearing them. Peter Chang's colorful acrylic bracelet with its protruding, pointy ornaments and Marjorie Schick's necklaces of sharp wooden sticks look like they might tear the wearer's clothing or skin. That doesn't make them any less interesting to examine.

Aesthetics trump function for most of the show, with pieces clustered in vitrines and framed on walls like rare artifacts. Only in the last gallery are some of the more outlandish necklaces and headpieces placed on mannequins to demonstrate how they are worn.

The relationship between the decorative and fine arts has long been a reciprocal one, with painters and sculptors such as Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder and Salvador Dali making forays into jewelry. The exhibit reminds viewers of that connection by starting with a Dali-esque gold nose molded by German jeweler Gerd Rothmann from Ms. Drutt's face.

Starting in the 1960s, both artists and craftspeople experimented with body art to express similar concepts related to personal identity and space. The show misses the opportunity to draw the parallel in terms of specific examples, such as comparing Bruce Nauman's cast-wax sculptures of arms to British artist Caroline Broadhead's woven nylon "Sleeve," which similarly extends from the shoulder to the wrist. Her "Necklace," pulled to veil the wearer's face, is equally inventive in melding jewelry with clothing. …